âWe did two takes of the song, and itâs performed in front of a pretty big crowd,â Demme remembered. âAnd by that point, Meryl wasnât even looking at the strings, she was just playing.
âOzymandiasâ is at first glance a sonnet about the transitory nature of life and its pretensions of fame and fortune. The decaying, ancient statue bears witness to the fact that the pursuit of power and glory for their own sakes are not only fleeting, but they are also illusory, unworthy ambitions even within the lifetime of their seekers.
Cinna's literary fame was established by his magnum opus Zmyrna, a mythological epic poem focused on the incestuous love of Smyrna (or Myrrha) for her father Cinyras, treated after the erudite and allusive manner of the Alexandrian poets. He was a friend of Catullus (poem 10, 29â30: meus sodalis / Cinna est Gaius). When the Zmyrna was completed in about 55 BC Catullus hailed it as a great achievement, nine harvests and nine winters in the making.